Art Sustainability Activism

September 2 – May 8 | Science and Engineering Library
October 20-31 | Durfee Conservatory

During the fall semester, samples of climate-focused work by artist and master glassblower Sally Prasch will be on display around campus at the Science and Engineering Library, the Seed Library, and the Durfee Conservatory. The placement of artworks around campus aims to foster a deeper connection with the wider campus community.

Thursday, November 6, 6 p.m. | UMass Old Chapel

Madeline ffitch is the author of the story collection Valparaiso, Round the Horn and the novel Stay and Fight, which was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway award, the Lambda Literary award in Lesbian fiction, the Los Angeles Times Book Award and the Washington State Book Award. ffitch's work has appeared in Harper's Magazine and The Paris Review, and has been awarded two O. Henry Prizes. She is included in the 2024 edition of Best American Short Stories. Her second novel, about kitchen table antifascism in Appalachia, is forthcoming from Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ffitch writes and organizes in Appalachian Ohio.

Wednesday, November 12, 5:30-7 p.m. | Randolph W. Bromery Center for the Arts lobby 

A panel discussion with artists from Zea Mays Printmaking and its founder and director, Liz Chalfin. Participants: Liz Chalfin, Angela Zammarelli, and Joyce Silverstone. The Florence, Massachusetts-based Zea Mays Printmaking studio has a twenty-five-year history of workshops, education, research, and artist residencies committed to safer printmaking and artistic growth.

Reading and Q&A
Thursday, November 13, 6 p.m. | UMass Old Chapel

Layli Long Soldier earned a BFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts and an MFA with honors from Bard College. She is the author of the chapbook Chromosomory (2010) and the full-length collection WHEREAS  (2017), which won the National Books Critics Circle award and was a finalist for the National Book Award. She has been a contributing editor to Drunken Boat and poetry editor at Kore Press; in 2012, her participatory installation, Whereas We Respond, was featured on the Pine Ridge Reservation. In 2015, Long Soldier was awarded a National Artist Fellowship from the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation and a Lannan Literary Fellowship for Poetry. She was awarded a Whiting Writer’s Award in 2016. Long Soldier is a citizen of the Oglala Lakota Nation and lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Co-sponsored by the Visiting Writers Series.

January 29 – May 8 | Hampden Gallery

In Fragile Connections, artist and master glassblower Sally Prasch transforms blown and recycled glass into intricate sculptures that address the climate crisis. Both visually striking and intellectually engaging, her pieces range from vivid, neon-lit forms that underscore the urgency of environmental issues to works delicately engraved with thought-provoking texts about climate change.

Late spring 2026 | Bowker Auditorium

Director Michael John Garcés and playwright Larissa FastHorse will collaborate with UMass theater professor Priscilla Page and her students, Native American theater artist Jasmine Goodspeed, and other Native American communities across western Massachusetts to develop a new performance work. This residency is supported by the Center for Braiding Indigenous Knowledges and Science and UMass Theater Department.